Having completed my PhD at the Department of Geography, The University of British Columbia, I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Urban Geography at the Max Planck Institute as part of the multi-sited GLOBALDIVERCITIES project (funded by the European Research Council Advanced Grant). I was also Research Leader in the Urban Encounters project within the broader Capturing the Diversity Dividend in Aotearoa/ New Zealand (CaDDANZ) project at Massey University in New Zealand. I aim to develop research that is timely, socially- relevant and always with the possibility of collaboration, public and student engagement both in and out of the classroom.

My courses develop the same themes as my research. I incorporate theoretical and empirical material as foundations for discussions on spatial patterns of urban change, diversity and migration as well as poverty and precarity in global cities. My teaching philosophy is broadly guided by the idea that the city is our laboratory. Through student-centered activities, I aim to facilitate trust, respectful dialogue and accountability in the classroom experience. My hope is that we will translate this to our worlds beyond as we work towards imagining and creating alternative and more socially-just futures.

As ever, I look forward to conversations of the above over hot and/or cold beverages!

Research Interests

My research interests lie at the intersections of difference and diversity, critical cosmopolitanism, class, gender studies and the political-economic development of urban Southeast Asia. Alongside extensive ethnographic methods, I also use techniques of film and photography in collaboration with research respondents to create visual narratives through my work. The fundamental question that underlies my research and teaching programmes is what accounts for how social and economic inequalities are constituted through people's mobilities to, through and from diversifying cities? My first monograph entitled "Class inequality in the global city: migrants, workers and cosmopolitanism in Singapore" (2016, Palgrave Macmillan) won Labour History's 2017 book prize.

My current study problematizes the notion of “migrant integration” by investigating how inequality emerges through forms of differential inclusion. I address the politics of diversification by showing how diverse peoples are incorporated through uneven modes of governance, ordering and management.

Ye Junjia and Brenda Yeoh S.A. (2018). Disciplining deserving subjects through social assistance: migration and the diversification of precarity in Singapore. Annals of the American Association of Geographers , .